If I told you that every recent study of education confirms the same thing about improving America's schools. And if I told you that this reform strategy is non-controversial, non-partisan, does not involve changes to existing education delivery, and does not even require major legislative action. And if I told you that the strategy not only does not involve a large infusion of new funds but ends up saving America's taxpayers billions of dollars while strategically improving the real-world skills of students, you would probably click on this diary and recommend it, wouldn't you?
Well, your moment of truth has arrived.
No doubt you've heard the expression: Fish are the last ones to understand what water is. Well, the same might be concluded about public education--at least in terms of understanding what "learning" is, particularly when it comes to the learning of teachers.
We have known for many decades, and every major research study confirms it:
The single most decisive factor in a child's educational progress at school is the quality of teacher in their classroom.
No one disputes this. It is not a partisan issue.
That's why No Child Left Behind, in its bumbling, disastrous way, tried to ensure that every district certify "highly qualified" teachers were in classrooms across America.
Let's look at what has unfolded around "teacher learning" over the last decades:
- We have designed state licensing exams for new teachers,
- Created a National Board to certify quality teaching,
- Instituted mandatory "mentoring" programs,
- Looked at merit pay, and bonuses (for increased test scores), and even combat pay for those working in inner city schools.
- Not to mention, of course, adopting state standards and state exams, all designed, somehow, to prove if a teacher is doing their job or not.
In short, policy makers understand good teachers are the indispensable key to education and have sought pathways to get us there.
Of course, if government could wave its magic wand and alter social realities with mandates and armies, we would not be riding this donkey cart full of rotten turnips, heaving corpses off the back. And, despite the array of liberal medals on my chest, on this one, I side with Goldwater conservatives: A distant central government can't decree, mandate or spend its way to excellence, nor would we want it to.
And the proof is in the pudding: despite everything that has been done to change the way we teach, train and compensate new teachers, within five years we still lose 50% of them. In addition, new teachers show up with a disproportionate share of classroom management problems and, typically, a less engaging learning environment, not to mention (though I don't subscribe to their importance) lower test scores.
Can I say this plainly enough?
What we are doing in bringing new teachers into the profession is not working.
The existing system is ineffective, unsustainable and incapable of dealing with today's complex problems, not to mention the unknown challenges of tomorrow. Oh, and by the way: this dysfunctional system upon which the future excellence of education depends will need to bring fully 2.4 million teachers into the profession in the next decade.
Can you hear me now?
And so, knowing that the Chinese character for "crisis" is synonymous with "opportunity", I (finally) get to my thesis:
It is not only possible to achieve fundamental school reform by changing the ethos, culture and training of teachers new to the profession, it is essentially the only way it can be accomplished.
Analogous to what Thomas Kuhn posited in his powerful analysis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, generational change equates with changes in the way people see, think and understand the world. Until old paradigms and systems are supplanted by new ones, helped along by a new generations' conceptions of how the world works and what is possible, there will not be fundamental change in public education.
We have that window of opportunity. Right. Now.
Lasting school reform can be achieved locally and organically by creating effective educator teams in every building that believe in collaboration, risk-taking and a shared vision of educational excellence. In fact, we have to do it locally, one district, one school at a time--creating more effective organizations and cultures. That is the only way that change ever occurs, and the precise reason why NCLB is such a hollow sham of reform.
And, by doing this, we will not only save money on needless teacher attrition (estimated at 2.2 billion annually), improve new teacher performance rapidly and keep them in the profession longer, we will also reinvigorate the meaning and concept of democratic participation in solving our country's problems.
To the Numbers
Here is what Brookings says about teacher demographics:
The teacher workforce in the United States has aged steadily since the mid-1970s and is on the verge of a large wave of retirements. In 2005, 42 percent of teachers were aged fifty or older, compared with 25 percent in 1996. The distribution of teacher experience shows the same trend. In 2001, 38 percent of U.S. teachers had more than twenty years of experience—up from 28 percent in 1986 and 18 percent in 1971.62 The implication is that more teachers will be needed to replace the many who will retire soon.
They don't produce a nice round number, but others have. Between the wave of retirements, a growth in projected enrollment, and a coninued decline in teacher-pupil ratio (not the same as class sizes!), most estimates come in around needing 2 to 2.4 million teachers in the next decade.
That's over half a teaching force, folks. In one decade.
This is an unprecedented opportunity to change, re-vision and re-culture a public institution that, while not deserving of the disparaging attacks of its worst critics, is clearly in need of a boost in terms of shared inspiration, a team mission and collaborative risk-taking. Conversely, if not handled well, the coming generational change in teaching could put the whole of public education at risk.
So, how do we make sure to get it right?
We start every new teacher in a program that puts them together as a group, whether by school, district or region. The goals: to learn through mutual classroom observations, engage in regular dialogue, attend monthly seminars on specific topics germane to their teaching, and gather for an annual retreat in summer. We tie this program to a teacher's pursuit of tenure. In fact, some schools, and even one state, Massachusetts, has already adopted such a model and given it a fancy, if militaristic, name: Teacher Induction.
We use such a program to infuse in every new teacher the values of collaboration, group inquiry and consensus action to make teaching dynamic, meaningful, creative and a lasting source of fulfillment. Essentially, we say to them:
We trust that you will work effectively with your colleagues to find best practices and grow as a learning organization, sustain and motivate each other over time and find creative solutions for the challenges you face.
In addition to tying their eventual acceptance into the profession ("tenure") to completing the program, we grant them increased pay for earning graduate credits through the monthly seminars and summer retreats.
The most fascinating thing about the potential of this "reculturing" of schools is that it seems to fit so remarkably with the gestalt of the new generation, a generation unfairly criticized and reviled by the mainstream media. Check out this quote from an Association of School Curriculum and Design website (it's a PDF--so google it: Teachers: The Next Generation, by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong)
Meet Generation Y, the millennials, a potential U.S. workforce of as many as 40 million people born from 1977 to 1986 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Some of these individuals have elected to become teachers, and although many have passed the five-year mark in their careers, a new wave is just now entering the classroom.
Three of them were sitting in the back of the room when I spoke to a group of administrators at the Staff Development Council of Ontario's conference in Toronto, Canada. They appeared to be in their early 20s, and they were chattering away while simultaneously taking notes. In fact, they were in such a happy state that I could not resist stepping forward.
As I approached, one of them immediately and apologetically declared, "We were not being rude, talking while you spoke. What you said was so good and so implementable—we can't wait to go back to school and form a group!"
This is the style of today's teachers. They are products of an increasingly global economy, where knowledge is power and laptop computers often provide the quickest means to attaining both. Many of today's young teachers not only have access to millions of digital resources, they also have at their fingertips thousands of professional and social networks. They are receptive to working in teams, and they are good at it. They do not blink at the mention of blogging, "Googling," or using Wikipedia. Indeed, learning communities are their forte.
In short, the reform strategy proposed here means that we "open up" the job of teaching to group dynamics, a shared mission and make every teacher part of the common solution to challenges in a particular school population. We empower them to team, confer, inquire and act based on their collective knowledge, experience and skill in working with their particular kids.
This is, in effect, a massive change in the "culture" of public education, one that has, for too long, been built around isolation, individual effort, top-down management thinking and the lack of a unified, common purpose. Scott Thompson of the Panasonic Foundation in Education Week gets it, and explains the importance of recognizing organizational culture:
That a politicized, fear-based, excuse-prone, top-down culture is antithetical to sustainable high performance in public education is a no-brainer. It’s also axiomatic that a culture of trust, openness, and collaboration—one built on shared ownership of a compelling vision—is crucial for sustaining high performance in public schools. What this means is that, unless an optimal culture for high performance is in place, "reculturing" must be at the core of educational leadership work.
OK, but what is organizational culture? In essence, it is the underlying shared beliefs, history, assumptions, norms, and values that manifest themselves in patterns of behavior or, in other words, as "the way we do things around here." Reculturing, then, is fundamentally altering an organization’s culture, its way of doing things. Leaders of high-performing school systems train much of their strategic attention on reculturing, because that’s where the mother lode of leverage for lasting change is located.
This is much different, much more intensive, and in all likelihood, much more effective than other training or reform efforts in that it truly impacts the "what we do here" governing a school--a revolution from within not unlike one that has already swept through successful business organizations.
To believe we can effect fundamental change in public education without changing the organizational structure and culture in schools is to be ignorant of how social systems operate to preserve the status quo. There can be no "reform" in human institutions without changes in the way those humans think, behave and act. Period.
So, to those of you who still demand "measureable accountability" from public schools, I say: Do you want a dynamic change in the human capacity for promoting learning? Do you want the system to consistently produce effective educators? Or, do you just want a reason to continue to bash and complain about schools based on useless test scores?
In turn, such a reform strategy would mean reconsidering even somewhat progressive practices, like mentoring, in light of the new realities that pertain:
"Schools would do better to rely less on one-on-one mentoring and, instead, develop schoolwide structures that promote the frequent exchange of information and ideas among novice and veteran teachers," says Susan Moore Johnson of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.
Surround Generation Y teachers with a community of creative thinkers and the solutions will abound. Professionals from marketing managers to software engineers rarely work alone—they work in teams. As should teachers, says Kathleen Fulton, director of Reinventing Schools for the 21st Century for the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. "Teachers should be in teams, working collaboratively around problems identified in their schools that are related to their students," Fulton stated in an article in the American School Board Journal (Rivero, 2006).
Collaboration is the most effective way for teachers to learn, and teachers learn more in sustained teacher networks and study groups than with individual mentors (Garet, Porter, Desmoine, Birman, & Kwang, 2001). Most people understand that businesses continue to train workers in teams with specific outcomes in mind; likewise, schools will see improved student learning if they harness the collective intelligence, creativity, and genius of their teachers in teams.
We create a culture around new teachers dedicated to the idea of being a true "learning organization", capable of adjusting, responding creatively and taking on challenges. We make teaching a collaborative search for the best curriculum and pedagogy in that particular school, with that particular population. We "grow" our teachers from Day 1, bond them to a common mission, inculcate a common language, and create meaning and satisfaction around expanded responsibility--and possibility--for the job of helping young people learn. From ASCD:
A school is in business to cause and promote learning. It should therefore model for all institutions what it means to be a learning organization. A school is not merely a place that expects students to learn; it must encourage and support everyone's learning.
For a school to be a model learning organization, all faculty members should be professional learners: They should engage in deep, broad study of the learning they are charged to cause. What works? What doesn't? Where is student learning most successful, and why? How can we learn from that success? Where are students struggling to learn, and why? What can we do about it? Effectively tackling these questions is what the "professional" in "professional practice" means.
Potential Problems
Two things.
First, in order to pull this off and effectively re-culture a school or district, very careful thought must go into "who" is facilitating the reculturing. If the power and prerogatives remain firmly within the control of school or district administration, the odds of a successful and lasting transformation are reduced.
The naked truth is this: it is almost impossible for a long-running, power-laden, bureaucratic organization to fundamentally reform itself. That's why the extra "push" of a new generation of teachers provides such a golden opportunity.
It also means that outside organizational development specialists, or specially trained in-district personnel need to be tapped to initiate and facilitate the team-building and training process for new teachers. In particular, the way in which the "new" teacher dynamic is introduced and integrated into existing school cultures will be paramount. The "buy in" of existing staff, willing and unwilling veterans, could make or break reculturing efforts.
Second, new teachers, being inexperienced educators, might easily be coopted or convinced that sham educational goals, like raising test scores, is somehow a breakthrough and worthy of their team's total focus and efforts. In other words, there is the danger that new teachers can be bent to some nefarious purpose, leaving schools only marginally more helpful to students and their families who are so desperate for a decent set of skills with which to confront the world.
We must hope, and believe, that if school cultures have truly transformed the process of dialogue, inquiry and collaboration surrounding the work they do with young people, that the best ideas, strategies and solutions will emerge from their work. In fact, that is the very essence of democratic action: local, collaborative, well-informed efforts directed toward the benefit of stakeholders.
If we go down the tubes as a nation, and it seems like our slide is well underway, let us go down giving our best to each other in local units of action and governance--and most important: believing that each of us can contribute and collectively generate solutions for the problems that face us and our world. Such self-reliance is quintessentially American.
At some point, we must fundamentally trust collaboration and our own God-given abilities to think and act wisely over being told by authorities that they, and only they, know the best way to create a better world for children. Their record, frankly, and that of the industrial, authoritarian model they believe in, is not very good; and in any case, every person must take responsibility for dealing creatively, and wisely, with the challenges facing us, rather than hoping or depending on someone else.
I have much more to say on how new teachers, their training and reculturing can fundamentally reform public education in the United States, especially how this will serve the real-world needs of children, and I hope to do that in the next weeks. But, this diary presents enough of the picture for now to initiate discussion and build a comment thread. Please recommend, weigh in and remember: your ideas and input assists the Education Uprising Panel and helps us formulate policy recommendations which will be compiled at Ykos in Chicago.